She was perfect and petite, the beautiful one that everyone adored. With flaxen hair and a cream complexion, Galinda was truly gorgeous, and she knew it.
Until it happened. Her world was turned upside-down by the forced arrival in her life of her polar opposite-the weird girl, the freak, the green girl. The girl everybody hated. At first, Galinda had hated her too, with a passionate loathing she had never felt before and couldn't explain. Elphaba Thropp was a plague on her perfect life, a disgusting, unnatural abomination.
But ever so slowly, she began to realize that Elphaba wasn't as terrible as she had originally thought. She could actually be fun to be with, smart and funny and sarcastic.
So Galinda had decided to help her. She couldn't be friends with the girl everyone hated, after all. So though it seemed like she would be fighting a losing battle, she decided to make her reluctant roommate beautiful. Elphaba-or Elphie, as Galinda had taken to calling her-seemed rather unwilling, something Galinda couldn't understand.
Especially because she had realized something she found unnerving. Elphaba was beautiful. With her shining dark hair like a raven's wing and her sharp, piercing eyes, Elphaba had a very exotic beauty about her, despite her unfortunate hue. But when Galinda looked at her friend in this new, positive light and saw her shining softly emerald, even that didn't seem so unfortunate anymore.
Life went on, and the girls became closer than close, telling stories and sharing secret fears and hopes they hardly dared to whisper. Galinda found her perfect prince in a certain Fiyero Tiggular, and was very happy.
Elphaba Thropp was probably the most interesting person she had ever met, full of crazy ideas and conspiracy theories, fiercely intelligent and outspoken. But Galinda-or rather, Glinda now-noticed that Elphie remained excluded from the world, shutting herself away and distancing herself from everyone. She didn't like that and sometimes it scared her, but when she tried to make her feelings known to Elphaba her friend would just shut down even more.
When Elphaba's dream was about to come true, Glinda accompanied her to the Emerald City, and stood and watched everything go completely awry.
As Glinda watched her friend explode into the sky, bursting with fire and defiance and freedom, tears slid down her cheeks as she realized she may have made the wrong decision.
And now, years later. She was famous throughout the land, beloved and powerful. Elphaba had been on the run, fighting tooth and nail against society for what she believed in. She had stolen Glinda's precious Fiyero away from her, a betrayal that still stung deep in her heart.
They hadn't spoken for years, but now, in the aftermath of the witch's death, Glinda felt numb. She clung tightly to the Grimmerie, the ancient spellbook that Elphaba had left in her care, and walked slowly, unfeeling, to a cracked mirror that hung on the roughly hewn stone wall of the castle in Kiamo Ko.
Glinda couldn't see a glimmer of the perky schoolgirl she had once been in the mottled reflection that stared back at her.
She saw a woman looking entirely small and lost and afraid. She thought of what she had become, and what she now stood for. Glinda thought, as she stared at her reflection in the torchlight, about everything she had refused to admit, even when Elphaba, the woman who had once been her very best friend, was fighting so hard against everything to make the truth known.
The Good Witch of the North sank slowly to the floor in a fresh wave of sobs as she realized that the Wicked Witch of the West had always been and would always be infinitely more beautiful than she was.